Imagine going into the office, booting up the computer and opening Internet Explorer to do research for that big presentation coming up. The internet takes a long time to load and is seriously jeopardizing the deadline of the project, so a technical services provider is called in. Some tweaks and changes are made, and the internet speed improves. The next day, the same problem occurs. The technical services provider is called back, and they work with the internet provider to investigate the problem. After more downtime, a new router is installed and seems to have corrected the slow-running internet. Problem solved.

But it’s not. On the third day, the sluggish internet demon is back. The technical services company returns and a complete analysis of the entire network of computers is done. Malware not detected by the customer’s virus protection was found on a rarely used computer in a back room and was the cause of the excessive bandwidth usage and slow-down of the network. After hours of downtime, the problem is solved. This is a real scenario, and the problem could have been avoided completely.

Enter managed services. Had this company purchased a managed services program, each machine would have had their bandwidth usage monitored, so an alert would have been sent that a particular machine was using an unusual amount of network resources. A technician would have been dispatched to solve the issue, likely before the customer even realized there was a problem.

Managed services provide comprehensive technical support and troubleshooting, maintenance and monitoring of your entire network for a low, fixed and predictable cost. By proactively managing your network, downtime is reduced through preventative maintenance, patch management and resolving problems as they are occurring. Since this is a fixed cost program, the risk is on the service provider’s end to keep the network running smoothly and prevent problems that might be labor intensive to repair.

A survey completed by CompTIA revealed that 26% of PC users experienced spyware infections and reduced productivity. The cost? Spyware infections alone cost an average of $8,239 per year. An Infonetics study showed that businesses with 101 to 1000 employees lost 1% of their annual revenue ($867,000) as a result of network down-time each year. Can your company afford computer system failures and downtime?

ˡ Level Platforms, Level Platforms White Paper, (Level Platforms, 2009) 2.